I suppose I should tell you how Remo came to accept that Claire was a terminal case. Hanging around the hospital as much as we were, we got to know some of the staff, and they got to know us. I think maybe Remo went out of his way to make sure they knew him […]
When I wasn’t in the room, Janine and Claire did have either some kind of heart-to-heart or a fight–I don’t know which because neither of them said. When Janine left Claire pretended to be asleep (again?) but she was snuffle-crying, which made it a hard act to believe. I took it as a sign she […]
Janine came in while Remo and Court were out getting food and Claire and I were both asleep. As usual, our mother was propped up in her hospital bed and I was face down on the mattress with my butt in the bedside chair. I’m not sure how long Janine was standing there before I […]
The next several days are kind of a blur in my memory. There was a lot of sitting around, waiting for news. Waiting for the results of various tests. Waiting for a doctor to come talk to us. Waiting to see how she would respond to medicine or treatment. Waiting to know what to feel.
By the time we finally saw her, Claire was doped up on post-surgery meds and feeling no pain. Her smile when she saw me and Courtney was huge, and she threw open her arms like she could hug us from the hospital bed, but she was reclined back and there were tubes in her arms […]
I drove and Court navigated. She had of course already looked up the directions on how to get there. Carynne had taught her well. At one point she told me to get off at the next exit. I could see the toweringly tall Waffle House sign so I asked, “If we’re getting off here, anyway, […]
Court and I got on a crack of dawn flight, which as you can guess was not my favorite thing. Business class was all we could get, which was fine. I declined the bloody mary they offered me when we boarded and slept the whole way to Tennessee. I honestly don’t remember whether we flew […]
Court arrived while I was on the phone. I wasn’t really absorbing what Flip was saying. He was trying to be his usual, well, flippant self, and you know how he was always matter-of-fact about medical things. But my brain just wasn’t absorbing his words well. So I had to keep asking things like “does […]
I should’ve known by then that Ziggy’s motto was applicable to all things in life. Ziggy’s motto, or maybe it was more of a worldview since it came in a lot of different expressions, was basically nothing is ever just an either/or proposition. Don’t make fake divisions. No false dichotomies. It’s not just that things […]
I was kind of on autopilot when Court and I came up out of the subway. A glance at the twin towers to orient myself toward downtown and I started walking west toward Ziggy’s. Court whistled from behind me. “Other way, big brother.”